Thursday, March 22, 2012

Digital Identity

Digital identity has become ever more important in the modern day world. Technology will become even more important in years to come causing people to come even more reliant on the ease of technology. This is not always positive though.

Social networking sites such as Facebook have enabled people to be able to simply choose an identity. People can be selective to what they wish to disclose but also create a completely new identity. The freedom these social networks can give you tends to cause more negative than positive effects such as the many cases of bullying even leading to suicide in many circumstances. The negatives of this result in the many cases of mistaken digital identity. This has only added to the larger numbers of paedophiles creating a differing digital identity. Identity is no longer about appearance or personality but what we chose to indicate to people. Facebook is almost certainly an example of performance choosing how we want to be perceived rather than who they genuinely are.

Another digital identity available to Americans is simply the make and types of technology people rely on. For example there is a strict divide between those who have a Blackberry or Iphone, it is now seen as a status symbol and can also relate to symbolise your identity through displaying class divides. These devices can further create someones digital identity through apps such as Blackberry messenger or Whatsapp whereby profile pictures and statuses can display anything and everything you wish to tell your digital “world” about you at that certain moment. For example your mood, your relationship status and even your whereabouts which can create a friendship through nothing but what you wish to reveal. It can also result in criminal activity, there is examples of cases whereby people have posted on the internet the time they are on holiday only to return to find their houses have been burgled.

The number of digital identities available to Americans will only seek to increase as more and more examples of media and technology. Americans will end up relying on technology for every daily task causing them to lose even more of their identity and relying on their digital identity.